Lie And Politics In Harold Pinter's Plays

Harold Pinter(1930-2008),a great playwright in British Literature,was praised as the most outstanding British dramatist after Bernard Shaw,and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in October 2005.The 1980 s proves to be the watershed in Pinter's dramatic creation.Before the 1980 s,Pinter's plays present the features of micro-politics while after it his plays reveal the characteristics of macro-politics.The Birthday Party(1958)obviously bears the stamp of his early Comedy of Menace without noticeable feature of macro-politics,but is dominated by the conflict between individuals which is called micro-politics.Mountain Language(1988)is the representative among his macro Political plays,and is full of macro-politics involving state power.It is a turning point for Pinter to openly give vent to his powerful political passion.And lie is one of the most common images in Pinter's plays and is also one of the reasons for Pinter being tagged as the master of “absurdism”.However,the researches at home and abroad on this aspect are relatively insufficient.Thus,this thesis takes lie as a means,and selects the early play The Birthday Party and the late Political play Mountain Language as the target plays,to probe into the relevance between lie and its inherent political connotations through analyzing on various lie's images from discourse and grammar aspect.This thesis firstly gives a general description of Pinter's difficult life and creating experience,and makes a review of the researches on Pinter's plays at home and abroad covering theme and artistic features,and then presents the thesis statement and structure.Meanwhile,a brief introduction is made to the lie and politics in western literature and Pinter's plays.Then,it makes a detailed discourse and grammar analysis on various lie's images of The Birthday Party and Mountain Language,and reveals the profound political connotations hidden beneath the lie's images.At last,it analyzes the deep causes of lie's formation in Pinter's plays and the social reality of Britain covered under the lie's images,and further reveals that the lie's formation has close links with Pinter's social and personal experience,and the naked and absurd social reality of Britain.Through the research,the conclusion can be drawn that lie,in Pinter's plays,was a weapon for the individuals to attack others,to protect their private interests,and a mask for them to conceal their real intention.Meanwhile,lie was a tool for the rulers to oppress the weak.Besides,lie became a narrative force for Pinter to reflect an absurd and complicated social reality of Britain.Finally,lie was applied by Pinter to motivate the social consciousness of human and their meditation on the human existence,to reveal his opposition and indignation at war,the abuse of power and violence,his dissatisfaction with the cruel social reality,and his worry about the future and mental state of human.